


on the things we’ve lost, the things we get to keep (a story from floor 6)

by everythingFangirl



Series: when I'm with you, I can only be me (stories from the victors' tower) [6]
Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Lunch Club, Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Hunger Games Setting, Angst, Fanfiction of Fanfiction, Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-13
Updated: 2020-07-13
Packaged: 2021-03-05 04:41:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,043
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25248601
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/everythingFangirl/pseuds/everythingFangirl
Summary: He’s alive.The implications of that… what that means, what he’s done, what he’ll have to do, what he’ll become,oh, solstices, what has he done… He can’t think about that right now. Can’t let himself go down that path just yet. There’ll be time to think about that later. The rest of his life, in fact.Because he’s alive.
Relationships: No Romantic Relationship(s)
Series: when I'm with you, I can only be me (stories from the victors' tower) [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1715008
Comments: 16
Kudos: 76
Collections: victors' tower canon works





	on the things we’ve lost, the things we get to keep (a story from floor 6)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [WreakingHavok](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WreakingHavok/gifts), [FizzyOrange](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FizzyOrange/gifts).



> I’ve returned to my brand! Here’s some Charlie content. 
> 
> This was heavily inspired by some excellent thoughts from FizzyOrange, thank you for those!! (I’ve also snuck in a tiny lil parallel if you can find it smile)
> 
> (Edit 04/11/20: minor rewrite, replaced Pyrocynical with Philza)

Charlie swims into consciousness slowly, agonizingly slowly, as if his brain had been filled with the green goop that now haunts his every waking moment and his thoughts had to individually wade through it to get to him. 

What time is it? Should he be getting up? He should be moving, he slowly recognizes. Finding cover, searching for supplies, dodging the Careers that are still hunting for him. There’s no time for a lie-in at the Arena. He should be getting up. 

But he’s warm, and he’s comfortable, he can afford five more minutes. The bed is soft under him as he moves to stretch out his arms -

And finds that he can’t.

Panic sets in almost immediately, his sleep-addled brain scrambling to find a solution as he gasps for breath. Someone must have found him, tied him down, trapped him in his own bed -

His bed. 

His bed?

That can’t be right. 

He presses his fingers into the soft material under him. A mattress. Definitely a mattress, unless he’s finally lost his mind. Which, at this point, he wouldn’t discount as a possibility. 

So where is he?

Charlie slowly opens his eyes, blinking as he tries to adjust to the harsh light. The blank white walls of a hospital room swim into focus, still blurry without his glasses, sparsely furnished besides his own bed and the restraints tying him down. 

It takes him far too long to come to the realization. This isn’t the arena. 

Which means -

Which means -

All at once, everything comes crashing back. 

He’s won. 

He, Charlie Dalgleish, tribute with a training score of 1, has won the Hunger Games. 

A peal of hysterical laughter tears from his throat. 

He’s alive. 

He’s alive. 

The implications of that… what that means, what he’s done, what he’ll have to do, what he’ll become, _oh, solstices, what has he done_ … He can’t think about that right now. Can’t let himself go down that path just yet. There’ll be time to think about that later. The rest of his life, in fact. 

Because he’s alive. 

He’s alive.

So just for a moment, he shoves down the thoughts of acid and scars and and gilded cages, and relishes in the softness of fabric against his fingers, the flowing of oxygen into his lungs, the pounding of his heart in his chest, because _he’s alive_.

He’s alive. 

That’s the one thing they can’t take away from him, now.

~

He must have fallen into unconsciousness again, or they made him fall asleep again, because the next time he opens his eyes the restraints holding him down are gone. 

And, as he looks around, he sees he’s no longer alone. 

He only recognizes the blur at the foot of his bed as Angel by her hair, half-black half-pink. When she notices he’s awake, she moves closer. 

“You did it,” she says, breathlessly. Charlie can hear the smile in her voice. 

“Yeah.” He smiles back. Instinctively, his hand moves to his neck to fiddle with the string around it -

Except his neck is bare. 

They’ve taken it. 

The initial flash of anger and fear is almost immediately replaced by the dull throb of resignation. Of course they would have. 

They took his name, his future, his humanity, of course they’d take his last tie to home as well. Of course they would.

Angel must see his change in expression, because her smile softens into something more sad. “Hey. It’s… I’m not gonna tell you that it’s okay, or that it’s gonna be easy, but… you’re alive, and that’s the most important thing, right? And, the stuff that happens next, I’m gonna help you. You’re going to get through this, too. You’re going to be okay.”

Charlie stares down at his hands. For a moment, he’s back in the arena, _eyes tearing up in pain as the slime grazes his fingertips, eating away at him, his entire world narrowing to nothing but that one patch of skin as it burns and burns and burns -_

The skin is completely unblemished. Perfect, even. Any trace of the damage is gone. 

~~His calluses are gone, too. Yet another piece of home they’ve taken away.~~

They’ve fixed his wounds easily enough. Just looking at himself, at the bruises and scars they’ve healed completely, he could almost believe it. That he could be okay. 

But his mind? Could they fix that damage so quickly, too?

The fragile, makeshift walls that he had built up to hold back the flood are already starting to crumble. 

He’s alive, but could he ever live with himself after this?

He can’t stop the tears that start to flow. Maybe he doesn’t want to. 

Angel wraps him into a hug without a word, and he doesn’t know how long he sits there, sobbing into her shoulder. 

She lets him cry. That’s the most she can do right now. 

Once Charlie thinks he can breathe again, he pulls away. Angel tries her best to smile, but he can see that she has tears in her eyes too. She reaches out to wipe at his cheek.

“I promise it gets easier. It never really goes away, but… it gets easier. You’re going to be okay, eventually.”

Some part of him wants to keep talking, to spill every thought in his mind, all his doubts and fears and grief, but… in that moment, he realizes that he doesn’t want to put his issues on Angel’s already burdened shoulders any more than he has to. For her, for the crowds and the cameras, he can smile and say he’s okay. For her, for the few people who still care about him, he has to be okay. 

Charlie closes his eyes, breathes in, opens them again. Smiles. “Okay.”

~~He doesn’t really have any other choice.~~

~

_I’m sorry, this is embarrassing, but… I don’t think I ever caught your name._

_The sylist smiles at him, sadly. “It’s Grace.”_

_”Grace. Thank you.” For everything. For choosing to try her hardest to help him, even when his defeat became all but set in stone._

_Just before the glass tube descends around him, before the platform below him raises him up to the arena, he hears her murmur “good luck.”_

~

Charlie’s escorted into a room he doesn’t recognize, filled with fabric and accessories and racks upon racks of clothes. Of course he already knows who he’s going to find here, but the moment he spots the brown head of hair next to a mirror, he can’t help the grin that spreads across his face. 

He calls out her name, relishing in the knowledge that he doesn’t have to feel guilty about it anymore. “Grace!” 

She turns around, her expression of surprise turning into a grin matching his almost instantly. “Charlie!”

She walks forward to meet him in the middle of the room. When she pulls him into a hug, it doesn’t feel awkward or unnatural. It feels like coming home.

“I knew you could do it,” she whispers into his shoulder. He doesn’t know if it’s true, but for that moment, he allows himself to believe it.

“Oh, by the way, here.” When they pull apart, Grace reaches her hand into a pocket and pulls something out. As she opens her fist, Charlie’s breath catches in his throat. 

It’s the die. He hasn’t lost it after all. 

“I replaced the string because it was damaged, it would have broken sooner or later, but otherwise, it’s exactly the same as it used to be.”

Charlie takes it from her slowly, almost reverently, running a thumb over the familiar edges. “Thank you. I… thank you so much.”

Grace smiles again, somewhat shyly. 

As Charlie fastens the string around his neck once more, a flash of inspiration hits him. “You really are my saving grace.”

For a moment, Grace just stares at him in disbelief, but then rolls her eyes and snorts with laughter. “Okay.”

She dresses him up in another suit, the colors bright and triumphant. Fitting for a Victor. Green makeup is brushed across his face. Near the end, she pins a clump of tiny blue flowers onto his lapel with a smile. 

Forget-me-nots. 

Another memory resurfaces. _Well, I suppose the best we can do is make you memorable._

Charlie smiles back. They’re damn well never going to forget him again. 

~~It’ll take him some time to realize what a curse that truly is.~~

“Good luck,” Grace says, this time with hope rather than resigned sadness, a genuine smile on her face rather than a forced one.

“Thank you.” 

~

Backstage, waiting to be called out for his first interview as a Victor, the first step into his new life, Angel finds him again. She’s in full costume, wings extending from the back and gas mask cradled in her arms. 

“You gotta make sure you’re careful out there.”

“Why? It’s over, right?” There shouldn’t be any more danger for him, right?

Angel bites her lip, looking for the right words in the moment of silence, and Charlie’s stomach drops.

She starts slowly, carefully. “The Capitol… people didn’t expect you to win. Training score of one, didn’t pick a name… let’s just say it’s caused some… differences of opinion. Some see it as…” She trails off, but her hesitation is all Charlie needs to put the pieces together.

An act of rebellion.

“Hey, uh,” Angel’s tone is suddenly more casual, but Charlie can hear a note of desperation ring through. “You never really said why you didn’t pick your name.”

Why hadn’t he?

He tries to rewind his thoughts, recreate what had been going through his mind at that moment, and finds only muddled scraps of ideas. Some part of it him had done it for the recognition, for the remembrance, yes. But… 

That action had been one of the only ways he had left to break free of the Capitol’s control.

Maybe even he hadn’t known why he did it in the moment. 

But then, maybe… some part of it had indeed been a genuine desire to strike back.

And that means he’s in danger. 

Angel shakes her head, her smile returning as brightly as ever. “Well, I’m sure it doesn’t matter. Good luck out there, yeah?” She pulls him into a hug. 

Next to his ear, where nobody else could hear them, she whispers “If it was, you can’t let them know.” 

When she pulls away, though, there’s no sign that she had ever been afraid in the first place. The last he sees of her before she hides back under the mask is a wide smile. Charlie takes a moment to pull himself together, pick up the pieces of his scattered thoughts and reconstruct them into something coherent. 

He’ll be what they want from him, then. He’ll be Slimecicle, smiling and bright and quick-witted and utterly unthreatening. A wide-eyed boy who hadn’t expected to win, whose only desire had been to not be forgotten by history. Who could have never possibly had any other intentions. 

~~A part of him doubts whether that even has to be an act.~~

He’ll smile for the cameras just as he’s now smiling for Angel, and he’ll say he’s okay.

And as Charlie steps onto the stage to the cheering of the crowd and the flashing of cameras, he knows, deep down, that he’ll never truly be able to leave it again.

~

Philza's smile is gentle. Almost too gentle, as if he's afraid that so much as speaking too loud would shatter the boy in front of him to pieces. “Let’s talk a bit about your naming ceremony. You certainly shocked us all when you refused to pick a name. Can you walk us through what you were thinking in that moment, why you chose to do what you did?”

 _No, I can’t._ “Well… a losing Tribute with a training score of one would have been forgotten about within the week. I guess I thought, by doing something like that… at least people would remember my name.”

“And you’ve achieved that, I think. A Victor with a training score of one? You’ve made history. All of Panem knows your name now, Slimecicle.”

 _No, they don’t._ But Charlie just leans back in his seat with a grin. “It was only a matter of slime.”


End file.
